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DWM window manager [2]

2025-04-23

the simpler the better

Mucking around with DWM proves the old adge that less is more. So far I haven't needed to add any of the myriad of patches available for DWM, it works as it is for me.

I've tried dwm-blocks but right now I'm using dwm-bar as I like the battery icon to update along with the charge.

I have edited config.h though and changed the keybindings to work better with a French keyboard and launch a few apps.

dwm running btop

Editing config.h is an ongoing job, but you can see a snapshot here

ST is the default terminal emulator for DWM but I rather like Ghostty even if it consumes a bit more memory. Adding window-decoration = none to .config/ghostty/config makes it look better in DWM.

I also added gtk-single-instance = true to make ghostty's startup faster.

Being able to swap between display layouts on the fly is cool. I mostly use monocle layout, but flipping to tiling or floating comes in handy.

I removed the lightdm display manager and installed Slim. Here is my .xinitrc

#!/bin/sh

# Source global X session scripts.
if [ -d /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d ]; then
  for f in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/*; do
    [ -x "$f" ] && . "$f"
  done
  unset f
fi

bluetooth off
clipmenud &
xscreensaver --no-splash &
ghostty &
feh --bg-scale --randomize ~/Pictures/wallpaper/* &
~/.local/src/dwm-bar/dwm_bar.sh &
# if dwm exits 0, restart -- this allows hot reloading of config.h
while type dwm >/dev/null ; do dwm && continue || break ; done

And here is my DWM configuration file (it probably isn't the latest version)
config.h